Susan Daniel

A lawsuit filed in Florida would give patients the right to smoke medical marijuana in their own homes, a practice the Legislature recently banned.

In Florida, the legal ways to administer medical marijuana are vaping, oils, edibles and other delivery systems.

John Morgan, the Orlando attorney who largely financed both the 2014 and 2016 attempts to get a medical marijuana amendment before Florida voters, carried out a months-long threat Thursday morning as he filed a lawsuit in Leon County Circuit Court over the new law’s ban on smoking marijuana.

The constitutional amendment voters passed in November includes a ban on smoking marijuana in public places. But the Legislature, in passing a law implementing the amendment, banned all smoking of medical marijuana. Proponents of the ban said smoking is unhealthy and a poor way to measure the proper dosage of a medication.

Shattering the stereotype of the lazy pothead, new research suggests cannabis users are actually more satisfied, more successful, and even more likely to volunteer in their communities than their nonsmoking counterparts.

Last week, the Independent described to its readers how the research was carried out:

“The study, conducted by market researchers BDS Analytics, surveyed consumers and abstainers across a wide variety of mental, social and financial factors. These included life satisfaction levels, attitudes towards parenting and employment data.

“The survey analysed extensive data from two US states that have voted to legalise the sale of cannabis — California and Colorado.”

Among other surprising findings, researchers discovered that weed consumers make significantly more money than those who abstain, with Californians who use the plant earning nearly $24,000 more a year. This could be related to the fact that 20 percent of California pot consumers hold a master’s degree while only 12… Continue reading →

A handful of drugmakers are taking their first steps toward developing marijuana-based painkillers, alternatives to opioids that have led to widespread abuse and caused the U.S. health regulator to ask for a withdrawal of a popular drug this month.

The cannabis plant has been used for decades to manage pain and there are increasingly sophisticated marijuana products available across 29 U.S. states, as well as in the District of Columbia, where medical marijuana is legal.

There are no U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved painkillers derived from marijuana, but companies such as Axim Biotechnologies Inc, Nemus Bioscience Inc and Intec Pharma Ltd have drugs in various stages of development.

The companies are targeting the more than 100 million Americans who suffer from chronic pain, and are dependent on opioid painkillers such as Vicodin, or addicted to street opiates including heroin.

HelloMD, one of the nation’s largest community of medical cannabis patients, today announced the results of their landmark study examining the use of cannabis as a substitute for opioid and non-opioid based pain medication. Performed in collaboration with University of California Berkeley, HelloMD surveyed its patient database, collecting survey data from close to 3,000 participants, questioning their usage of cannabis and how it has affected their consumption of opioids.

Use of cannabis as a substitute/in conjunction with opioid-based pain medication

Drug overdose deaths and opioid-involved deaths continue to increase in the United States. According to the CDC, most drug overdose deaths (more than six out of ten) involve an opioid with 91 Americans dying every day from an opioid overdose, including prescription opioids and heroin.

Key findings:

97% “strongly agreed/agreed” that they could decrease their opioid use when using cannabis

Ample scientific evidence exists supporting the contention that cannabis mitigates opioid abuse, dependency, hospitalizations and mortality. It is unfortunate this literature was not given strong consideration by New Mexico Department of Health Secretary Lynn Gallagher, who appears to have placed ideology above evidence.

Specifically:

• A 2014 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that states where medical cannabis was legal experienced year-over-year declines in opioid-related overdose deaths compared to those states where marijuana remained illegal. Authors determined, “Examination of the association between medical cannabis laws and opioid analgesic overdose mortality in each year after implementation of the law showed that such laws were associated with a lower rate of overdose mortality that generally strengthened over time: year 1 (−19.9 percent), year 2 (−25.2 percent), year 3 (−23.6 percent), year 4 (−20.2 percent), [and] year 5 (−33.7 percent).”

Due to requests by many of our Facebook page following, Tennessee NORML will begin publically sharing the stances on cannabis issues of Tennessee politicians and candidates for office as we learn them. We will be reporting on both pro cannabis and anti cannabis politicians and candidates of all party affiliations, all in the nonpartisan interests of educating voters who are interested in politics and cannabis issues in Tennessee.

We’re happy to report that Steven Reynolds, who is running to replace TN legislator Scott DesJarlais in district 4 has turned out to be a very cannabis law reform friendly candidate!

This is the answer we received from his campaign when we asked about his stance on cannabis issues:

“Steven has been calling for decriminalized cannabis on the federal level since day one of his campaign. He wants to impose a federal tax on all recreational cannabis… Continue reading →